In 1072, a medieval scholar named Mahmud Kashgari  from, as his name suggests, the Silk Road outpost of Kashgar  presented a landmark text to the Caliph of Baghdad. It was the first ever compendium of the Turkish language,
the babble of tongues spoken by nomadic tribes who roamed between the shores of the Caspian Sea and the wastes of Siberia. Despite the scope of his work, Kashgari was proudest of his hometown, boasting that the Turkic dialect there was the "purest" and "most elegant" of them all.

Nearly a millennium later, that language still lingers, spoken by ethnic
Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim minority who make up the majority population in
the Chinese frontier region of Xinjiang. Kashgar, a city of 3.4 million
surrounded by mountains and desert, is at Xinjiang's westernmost tip,
closer to Baghdad than to Beijing. And while its
history is rich  most agree at least 2,000 years old  many
Uighurs in Kashgar see their culture and heritage as under attack by the
Chinese government. In the latest move, authorities have started to
demolish Kashgar's old town  an atmospheric, mud-brick maze of
courtyard homes, winding cobblestone streets plied by donkey carts, and
dozens of centuries-old mosques. By some accounts, at least 85% of Old
Kashgar will be knocked down. Many expect the ancient quarter, considered
one of Central Asia's best preserved sites of Islamic architecture, to
disappear almost entirely before the end of the year. "This is the Uighurs'
Jersualem," says Henryk Szadziewski of the Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project. "By destroying it, you rip the soul out of a people." (Read a brief history of the Uighurs.)

The decision to raze Old Kashgar was made before anti-Chinese
riots in Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi broke out earlier this month. That
violence, in which at least 197 people died, was largely perpetrated by Uighurs
against local Han Chinese, according to Beijing. Uighur-rights groups
say that the Uighur death toll after a police crackdown and Chinese counterattacks has gone unreported and that the riots were an outgrowth of
long-standing frustrations with Beijing's policies, which, they say,
discriminate against Uighurs, depriving them of jobs in their own land while
curbing the teaching of the Uighurs' language and their ability to freely
practice Islam. (See pictures of China after the riot deaths on LIFE.com.)

According to observers, the bulldozing of Old Kashgar has only
accelerated in the riots' aftermath. The old town's warrens and alleyways
are home to a tightly knit Uighur community and present, in Beijing's eyes,
a potential haven for antistate activities. "Uighurs may see the area as a
space of refuge," says Szadziewski. "Moving them out makes the situation
much easier for China to control." As many as 220,000 residents (almost half
the urban center's population) will be relocated to "modern" housing
estates almost 8 km from their original homes, which have
been passed down within families over generations. The project has been
reportedly executed with little to no consultation with those to be displaced. A
sliver of Old Kashgar will remain as a sanitized tourist site, with a staff
of actors enacting traditional Uighur culture.

The Chinese government has justified its actions by saying the relocation
will improve residents' quality of life and that the old quarter was
vulnerable to potential fires and earthquakes  a dubious claim
considering how long many of Old Kashgar's structures have survived. Most
conspicuously, Old Kashgar was not included on a list of Silk Road sites
that Beijing recently submitted to UNESCO for World Heritage Status, though
it is still a top tourist draw in the region. Suggestions voiced in the international press by a
few Chinese city planners to reinforce and refurbish the
buildings of the old town  rather than reducing them to rubble  have
gone unnoticed in Beijing. A coalition of international heritage organizations is
petitioning UNESCO to intervene, but it's questionable how much the U.N. agency can
do to circumvent China's development policies.

The mood in Kashgar, according to observers, is one of defeat and
resignation. Since the violence in Urumqi, foreign reporters in the area have
been tightly controlled by government minders and often prevented from
taking pictures. Locals fear speaking out; a recent government propaganda
campaign sternly warned against those "creating a negative impression." The
demolition of the city's historic core fits lockstep with what many
consider a concerted effort on Beijing's part to bring Xinjiang firmly under
its grasp and dilute Uighur identity. More and more Han Chinese migrants are
flooding into Xinjiang's cities, including Kashgar. It's a process that led
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan to controversially brand China's policy
a "kind of genocide."

In Turkey  now the home of the scholar Kashgari's original manuscript  the Uighurs' plight strikes an emotional chord. And for most outsiders, dusty, remote Kashgar still holds a powerful romantic mystique.
Enduring beside billowing sands and beneath glacial peaks, it has charmed and thrilled travelers from Marco Polo to the modern backpacker
clutching a Lonely Planet guide. Its knife smiths and livestock bazaars drip with exoticism, exuding a living history at the edge of the world. But as Chinese authorities begin to smash Kashgar's ancient heart, its fabled allure may end up as just that  a fable.